Stuff That Matters In Life

Expectations

Joyful — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:38:12 +0000

In the book of Matthew in the Bible, chapter 8 recorded the well-known event of Jesus calming the storm. The disciples were in the boat with Jesus when a violent storm kicked up. Much to the disciples’ irritation, Jesus was asleep. The disciples called, “Save us, Lord! We’re going to drown!” The interesting thing to me is [...]

Getting to know God

Joyful — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 03:50:57 +0000

When my children ask me to buy them something, I hope they know me well enough to ask me for something that they know I would approve of. I hope they don’t ask me to buy them a video game rated “mature”, or an outrageously risqué outfit. I hope my children understand who I [...]

Accepting one another

Joyful — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:02:12 +0000

Back when I was in grad school some 25 years ago, my friends and I began “typing” each other with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. We would all refer to the book “Please Understand Me” to try to understand each other’s personalities, but more often to use it to point out each other’s idiosyncrasies. “Oh, you [...]

Meeting parents

Joyful — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 05:33:58 +0000

I had the opportunity to present 2 workshops to parents this past Saturday. Talking to other parents to share my experiences as a parent and knowledge that I’ve learned from my studies is something that I’ve been wanting to do. I’ve been looking for more opportunities to do workshops like this. When I had 40 parents in [...]

Taking off the mask

Joyful — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 05:16:52 +0000

What do you do when you experience personal pain in your life? What if you were going through a personal crisis – depression, deep anger and bitterness, struggle with a sin, hurt, lost of your faith? Do you have friends and family with whom you can be totally honest? Can you tell anyone what [...]

Stress and worry

Joyful — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 01:06:38 +0000

My mom was a strong person when she was young. She told us she was athletic, liked to swim, and enjoyed going out. She had a lot of friends in Hong Kong. When she immigrated to the US, she raised us four kids in Pasadena without knowing the language here, and without the ability to drive. But [...]

Books I read

Joyful — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 05:31:28 +0000

A few books I read in the past couple of months that I have not recorded here: Shadow of the Giant by Orson Scott Card – Absolutely the last of the series I am going to read. I think I’ve read them all now. Heaven by Randy Alcorn – A hefty book. Some parts were really good, [...]

Consider the other side of the coin

Joyful — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 23:37:08 +0000

“Hey, what’s that?” My husband suddenly noticed the Pokemon writing decorations on our living room wall…ummm, they’ve been there for the last 5 days. And these are not little decorations. They are about one foot high, stretches about 5 feet across, tacked on the front wall immediately facing you when you enter the room. [...]

Acts 2 – true repentance

Joyful — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:54:35 +0000

I am writing down what I am studying and learning in Acts. One of the hardest person to forgive is yourself. If you’ve done something wrong or stupid in the past, it comes back to haunt you even years later. I still kick myself for some of the stupid things I did in college. Like toothpaste out [...]

There’s one in every class

Joyful — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 23:40:27 +0000

I was a substitute today for 7th grade social studies. In the beginning of each class, I gave very explicit instructions, wrote it in red on the board, telling the students not to write on the worksheet. The answers are to be written on a separate piece of paper. I made sure everyone was looking up [...]